(part 72) VERVE RECORDS AND FREE SPEECH

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Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, I am telling my story. The argument I am having with myself, and some of you, is a carbon copy of the kinds of arguments I was having with Verve Records, Steve Clark, and others at the end of 1967 over the direction my next album would take.

I am not continuing to talk about the subject of "free speech" as a side issue to the story, it is a central issue of the story. In 1967 Verve Records was the label I was on, but the exective hierarchy wanted to decide what I could or could not do as a follow up album to "Color Him In."

I was always told the album didn't do that well, but I had a vague suspicion the record had done better than I was being led to believe by those at Verve. Because of this, I wanted to have a say about the songs and production of the next album. Verve was unwilling to grant me this freedom of expression.

It soon became a battle over free speech and artistic freedom. As an artist, freedom, and the right to it, is a dominant point of my story. I suppose if all you wanted me to do was simply talk about Chris Lucey and "Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest" and "Color Him In," and how they were made, then in essence the story is over.

But from a wider perspective the story has actually only gotten started. In 1964 I recorded "All I Want Is My Baby" in England, for Andrew Oldham. I had no say about the song or anything else that went on. I just cut the record the way he told me to, and was dissatisfied with it. On returning to America, in 1965, I was relegated to writing songs to someone else's titles and took on the name of Chris Lucey.

There was no free speech involved there. I was merely hired help. But "Vietnam/Metropolitan Man" on the other hand was an act of free speech, even though both songs were censored by Mira Records, because of subject matter. Each of those songs would have been forced into obscurity if not for their appearance in the movie "Mondo Hollywood."

Subsequent to that, none of my records were given an opportunity, on merit, to be heard or judged by the public at large, so for some to question my discussion about free speech and artistic freedom would seem to fly in the face of a problem I was constantly faced with. By the time I got to the follow up album to "Color Him In," the subject of freedom of speech was at the very heart of the entire matter with Verve.

What I asked for, in fact what I demanded, was the right to say what I wanted on the second album. I had paid my dues, in my opinion, by that time, and needed to be given some sort of artistic freedom with which to create a work that was not only controversial, but ground breaking in it's concept and execution.

I had gone along for years doing everything the way someone else wanted me to do it. But by 1967-68 I had made a decision that that would change. It was an exercise in "freedom" for sure, but also one of futility. Verve was afraid of what I wanted to do with the second album. They had heard some of what what I recorded, but decided not to release it, and to this day still refuse to give me copies of my own work.

In the past 2 years or so Verve/Universal was contacted on my behalf, and characteristically would not give me a copy of my contract with them. The excuse they gave, was that their contract was with Steve Clark and Our Productions, both of which no longer exist, and not with me. So this is not a vague unrelated rant by Bobby Jameson on his blog. This is a 40 year old ongoing controversy about the rights of an artist/writer, and the moral and ethical obligation of a label to right very old wrongs. In the end, neither I nor Verve/Universal could come to any agreement.

As of today, I still do not know what the legal ramifications of the split between Verve Records, Steve Clark/Our Productions, and Bobby Jameson were or are. I have never been paid a penny by Verve for "Color Him In." Not as an artist or its writer/composer. I have never been given an accounting of any kind by the label for the album. My break with Verve Records, in 1968, became the basis, in an odd sort of a way, for my next album, "WORKING."

(part 71) YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT

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The tepid response to the lyrics of "Holy Holy Holy," and other songs I was writing in 1967, was used by Verve Records to moralize its way out of a contract, and to stifle artistic freedom by means of a business decision which allowed them to drop me from the label in the midst of recording my second album for them.

Had I been allowed to finish the album for Verve, which I was not, it would have been a controversial work of some merit, I believe, and would have been a meaningful record in both sales and subject matter. As was the case with my song "Vietnam," which was never promoted by Mira Records in 1966, because of it's subject matter, "HOLY HOLY HOLY" was singled out of existence by company politics at Verve.

The moral indignation of timid minds and small ideas was a throw back to the 50's and early 60's, when Lenny Bruce was getting arrested for merely using words like "shit" or "fuck" in his standup act. The moralizing about artistic endeavor had been a favorite of assholes and weaklings for too long in the music business.

It was around this time that Richard Pryor singlehandedly broke the barrier for the use of the word "motherfucker," which I'm sure still offends many of you. His courageous brilliance superseded the fear of using the word, as well as softening the venom associated with it's utterance in the arena of comedic genius. In other words, you have to view the entire context of a subject as opposed to singling out a specific word you might find distasteful.

In relating my story, and giving you the ammunition to shoot me down with it, I am moved to take a stronger position in defense of my own work, some of which I am making available for the first time in 40 years. If you think I did that so you could moralize or scrutinize my choice in subject matter, you're wrong.

I have no more patience with small minds now than I did in the 60's when I began creating this kind of material. If it were not for computers, the internet, myspace, facebook, and youtube, where I have made these works available, you never would have known about them at all.

If art is always subjected to some idiot at a record company or radio station, which it has been in the past, most of what you hear would never have been heard. Rap music is heard because the audience for it is greater than the moral opposition to it. I am not a rap fan, but that is not the point, it is the freedom of expression that has won out.

Now major labels have jumped on the bandwagon for one simple reason, money! It makes a lot of money! So where's the indignation? Where are the high minded morals? They have been tossed out for the sake of profit. So if I read this right, it means that profit is more important than morality.

My argument for "HOLY HOLY HOLY" is made crystal clear by the popularity of controversial rap and hip hop lyrics some forty years after I attempted to put forth a highly provocative work that some found offensive. If you take the position that Verve's dropping me from their label, based on my offensive subject matter, was appropriate then you are an asshole as well. You might as well go get a placard and mobilize a group to eliminate rap.

In writing this piece I asked my 89 year old mother what she thought about this particular segment and she felt as though I might be attacking the reader. I thought about this and told her that I was attacking the reader, if in fact they were moralizing in the manner that I am complaining about.

If you are not one them, then what I have said here does not apply. I don't want to write a blog for anybody if I have to edit and re-edit my thoughts, choice of words, or subject matter. I have my own opinion. I am sure that many people who may read what I write will simply not come back to read any more, that's fine. On the other hand, there will be people who are glad somebody is saying something other than the crap being perpetrated as fact.

There is an attitude in this country that if it's negative, it's bad, which I can not tolerate any more as a rational thinker. Of course you may disagree that I am rational. It's this, "we've got to be positive at all costs all the time." Why? Maybe if we spent more time being attentive to the truly negative things going on around us we could actually do something constructive about them.

Refusing to see something is exactly why we're still in a war that is a national tragedy, because few wanted to be seen as negative, back when we had the opportunity to say no to fools like George Bush and Dick Cheney. I tried to speak out about Vietnam and I was censored. I do not plan to be censored again. So if I have offended you, buck up, I have been offended my whole life.

If censorship is permitted, then freedom is challenged. You could do away with pornography, for example, simply because some people were offended by it. That may suit a few, but I am not interested in living under such conditions. Being born in the 40's I lived through the 50's and had to submit myself to the overbearing moralistic narrowness of that time, being too young to speak out.

When the 60's rolled in it heralded massive change to the overall structure of a society riddled with false taboos and boogeymen promulgated by the likes of Joe McCarthy. I vowed then to fight for the right of individual self expression. It's obvious that fight still continues.


Another of the demos from the period of 1967-68

(part 70) THE BOBBY JAMESON STORY CONTINUES...

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I get a lot of emails about what I write, as well as comments. Sometimes there are no comments, which is in a way the loudest of all commentary. Much of what is said is positive, but some of it is hard for me to understand, such as passing judgement on me for something that happened 40 years ago.

Some of what I describe is reiterated back to me, via comments and/or emails, as if it just took place, begging the question, "Are you sure you made the right, fair, or best decision in doing it?" Hell no! I'm not sure at all. It's just what I did back then.

If I sound pissed off and frustrated, I am. I'm relating my account, good and bad, about the past. I can't now change my decisions or judgement about the things I did then. I mean I could, but what would be the point? I could tell you a completely different story if I wanted to make myself look a whole lot better, but again, what would be the point?

The things I'm telling you here are at times difficult to relate publicly, because they make my judgement look flawed in some cases. It was, but it is still what I did at the time. Being screwed over, again and again, and taking too many drugs and drinking too much, was a good way to insure chaos, which I did. That is what I'm writing about here.

If you bring your own set of morals and beliefs to the table and read this, then I am sure of one thing, we will have disagreements. If on the other hand you come and read this like a text of a history, which it is, then you may gain an understanding of what I had to deal with, and how I tried to do it.

I am not proud of some of the things I did but they are done. Would I do some things differently now? Probably so, but I can't change the past so I am attempting to look at it for what it was. I was 19, 20, and 21 years old at the time of the story so far, and it was the 60's. Everything was much different then.

The world was changing by the second, and I was loaded and getting more loaded. Like it or not, the reality of alcoholism and drug addiction is progressive. You may think I could have done some things differently, but I am telling you flat out that what I did, even at my worst, was as good as I could do at that moment, whether you like it or not, or agree with me or not.

Once again, I didn't come here to make you like me or agree with me. I came here to tell my story, warts and all. Let's clear some things up! I don't like the music business at all. I have never met such dishonest two faced pricks in my life. I was not paid money I was owed for what I did, and in some cases, to varying degrees, was cheated out of the rights to my work.

To this day, I remain one of the victims of Tony Alamo, Andrew Oldham, Randy Wood, Betty Chiapetta, Abe Somer, Bob Cohen, Ken Handler, Steve Clark, and others.

If that fact changes in my lifetime, I'll become a nicer guy. Until then get off my ass with the, "Why are you so angry and bitter" bullshit. Man! If you don't know by now, at what, and why I am angry then I would suggest you stop reading anything I write because you've missed the point.

If you, your religion, or morals, have been offended or challenged, then maybe you don't really have any. Maybe what you think you believe in is so damned fragile that it's not worth much. I have stayed sober for 32 years living on piss water and phony goodness from condescending people from church's, 12 step programs, and everything else under the sun.

I learned a long time ago that if my sobriety was dependent on anything outside of my own deeply held and personal commitment to stay sober, no matter what happened or didn't happen, that I would be doomed to once again run from reality via drugs and/or the bottle.

I stay clean and sober even though everything that could have gone wrong did. Nobody can shake that, so nobody ought to be able to shake your beliefs about yourself. God is not offended, people are. God is not afraid, people are. God knows one thing about Bobby Jameson, and that is that I didn't quit, even though I had a million good reasons to throw in the towel.

Every day is like a disaster in my life, and it has been for many decades. I do not have the luxury of multiple choices in my daily life. I take what I've been given and I make use of it as best I can for today. I try and show up at this computer to spill my guts on the keyboard so some asshole can decide whether he or she agrees with me.

I don't care whether you agree with me or not. If that were the case I'd just stop writing this, and we'd all be comfortable in our ongoing state of denial. If I complain about not getting paid, somebody questions me for doing so. If I say people in the record business are assholes, somebody gets mad at me for that.

By the time I get through editing the things people don't think I should say, there won't be anything left to say! This is the Bobby Jameson story. This is the Bobby Jameson blog. It is not "critic"s corner" online. I have an attitude! So what? That's part of what makes me me. If you want to read about someone who you agree with you're probably reading the wrong blog.

If on the other hand you are interested in what happened to Chris Lucey/Bobby Jameson 40 years ago in the 60's, I can help you there. This is a true story. There are elements in it that will offend some of you. There are elements that you will disagree with, and you will question my actions and words.

The point of a true story is that it is true. It actually took place in the lives of real people, in real places somewhere in the past. I spent 27 years sober trying to believe that the past was the past and I should just let it be. That almost killed me. Now I am realizing that everything I am today is linked forever to what I have done, what I have said, and what I have thought about.

Only by joining my past with my present will I ever have a future and be a truly whole human being. The past and its wounds will only heal through honest recognition, by the creator of that past in the present light of day, or simply stated, "Acceptance of oneself."


This is another demo from the 1967-68 period...I will continue to post various demos as I go...

(part 69) TABOO LYRICS - DON'T QUESTION ANYTHING

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Either you have no opinion about the subject matter, or you do, and are offended, or possibly angered, or disappointed by it. Good! My intention when I wrote things like "HOLY HOLY HOLY" and others was to get your attention. The purpose was to mix positive and negative subjects into one single picture, and to draw a parallel to what I saw going on around me, and still see going on around me.

Good people doing bad things. Honest people being dishonest, and my favorite: spiritual people being hypocritical. I was a walking target for the hypocrisy of many, and remain so to this day. If you remember the beginning parts of this story, I had to endure the likes of Tony Alamo, one of the world's great con men, who became a so-called born again believer. He used his new found transformation to become an even bigger con man.

Presidents who lied to get us deeper into war, like Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam. The practice of mixing religion, patriotism, and morality to hide the treachery of the so-called good and decent people. Much like today, the same mixture of Jesus and America, or God and country, was intermingled by some to pressure the rest to go along with the great big lie, Iraq.

I was fighting this shit in 1967-68. The beginning of the "Jesus Movement" started in the late 60's. In 1967 I ran into Tony Alamo at Canters Deli on Fairfax Ave., a big hippie, and street people gathering place. He was out rounding up hippies for the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation.

He saw me about the same time I noticed him, and when we got close enough to each other he gave me the famous Tony Alamo stare and yelled, "There's only one Jesus and you're not him." This immediately brought back memories of the day Tony told someone that I was Jesus Christ.

The point is that the subject of Jesus and Bobby Jameson had a history that hasn't gone away. I liked Jesus Christ, but I don't like Christianity. Jesus, was a prophet in my way of thinking, not the head of some man made religion that twists everything into a state of mental illness, which is then used to back up every piss poor idea we as a country came up with, or continue to come up with.

Remember! George Bush was an alcoholic, born again christian, who used his beliefs to do more Goddamn damage then anyone I have ever seen in a long time. Conversely, the opposition has it's religious beliefs doing the same dance of death from the opposite end of the spectrum.

Again, the point is that beliefs, because they are beliefs, are dangerous. They allow people who believe in something, to justify behavior that is completely destructive and probably a state of mass nationalistic mental illness. I took the subject of Jesus and/or religion, and placed them in the most unlikely places I could think of for the purpose of examining the absurdity of what we do all the time.

Because we believe in God, we are right. Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side." But if you place God, or religion, in a setting where you do not expect to find them, everything changes. If we could look with an objective point of view at what we do, as a result of what we believe, we might well be horrified at what we see.

The trouble is that all of this is a taboo subject. No one wants to talk about certain things, like priests who molested children, so it just continued on for decades. My use of taboo lyrics was an attempt to break open the box. I don't really think God is threatened by me, but people certainly were, and probably still are.

It is the easiest thing in the world to dismiss differences by suggesting that the subject is without merit, and or purpose, in your or someone's opinion. I attempted to write an entire album of this kind of material that would have knocked your fucking head off, but I was systematically prevented from doing so by the powers that be at the time.

The fact that there was a market for this kind of material was made clear after one incomplete play of "Holy HoIy Holy" on a San Francisco radio station.



This is just one of many demos I made in the 1967-68 time frame. I will post others from this period as well since there are so many....

(part 68) LYRICS TO "HOLY HOLY HOLY" 1967

HOLY HOLY HOLY

I'M SURE THAT I WAS BAPTISED
BY A SUPERFICIAL MAN
THE WORDS HE SPOKE WERE MEANINGLESS
I COULD TELL WHEN HE BEGAN
THE WATER FROM HIS VESSEL
HAD BEEN GOTTEN FROM A TAP
HE RUBBED IT ON MY FOREHEAD
AND BEGAN TO RAP HIS CRAP
AND I SAID
HOLY HOLY HOLY
I THINK THAT YOU'RE A FAKE
IN FLOWING ROBES
YOU DO NOT KNOW
EXCEPT HOW MUCH TO TAKE
YOU MAKE THE SIGN OF JESUS
AND YOU BOW AND BEND YOUR KNEE
YOU DIG THE ANCIENT RITUAL
OF PLAYING AT BEING A PRIEST
HEY YOU THE PRIEST IN BLACK AND WHITE
IT'S SAID YOU WORK FOR GOD
YOU SAY YOU WORK FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
AND BROTHER I SAY THAT YOU'RE A FRAUD
I'VE LISTENED AND I'VE HEARD YOU SAY
THE DAMNED ARE SENT TO HELL
WELL TAKE A GOOD LOOK AROUND YOU FRIEND
CAUSE I'M SURE YOU KNOW IT WELL
AND I SAY
HOLY HOLY HOLY
I THINK THAT YOU'RE A FAKE
IN FLOWING ROBES YOU DO NOT KNOW
EXCEPT HOW MUCH TO TAKE
YOU MAKE THE SIGN OF JESUS
AND DILIGENTLY
YOU BOW AND BEND YOUR KNEE
YOU LOVE THE ANCIENT RITUAL
OF PLAYING AT BEING A PRIEST
HOLY HOLY HOLY

Bobby Jameson 1967

(part 67) "HOLY HOLY HOLY" ON THE AIR IN SAN FRANCISCO

This is only a demo of the song Holy Holy Holy and probably only some of the final lyrics, but I wanted to get something up to give this song a real sense of existing.. I put the words, as they are, into the video to make it easier to understand. Sorry for the spelling mistakes in the video...

What I am writing about here regarding religious beliefs, or the lack thereof, was an extremely important subject to me back in the 60's. There wasn't an evangelical movement back then like there is today. Religion was viewed somewhat differently in that time frame by mainstream America.

There was no TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) on cable TV, or anything else like we have come to take for granted presently. There were no cell phones, no cable news channels, etc. Newspapers and magazines, network news in the morning and evening, and AM radio was where we learned about our world, unless you were part of what was making the news, which we were. We, being the anti-war pro peace hippie movement.

Religion represented the establishment and all the establishment stood for, which in our opinion was the war, fear of sex, drugs, and rock n roll, guilt, and fear of self expression. Religion and government were intertwined in such a way that set up false moral structures, which were assumed by it's supporters to be the last word on all things moral and important to the whole collective body of America.

The hippie and peace movements were embraced by the new direction of music and art and most of it's creators. They, for the most part, had very different ideas about their world. Most of these ideas were not shared by those in positions of power within the entertainment and radio broadcast mediums. As a fact, that became one of the driving forces behind underground FM radio in the 60's.

The tensions that existed between this duality of forces was what I was attempting to get at by writing some of the kinds of songs I wrote at the time, like Hitler and Jesus. The title itself was a perfect metaphor for the pairs-of-opposites philosophy I was experimenting with. Yin and Yang, positive and negative, light and dark, etc.

I saw Holy Holy Holy as a way to draw a distinction between the supposed goodness of religion, and religion's inability, to produce members who could see that blowing up Vietnam was not a net positive for the world. I saw that people who were going to church, and proclaiming their moral high ground, were also supporting a war which I, and much of the country was against.

Establishment types were afraid of braless hippie girls, but seemingly unmoved by the war's increasing body count on television and in print news media. The priests, who I saw as leaders within religious structures, whatever the denomination, had, in my opinion and that of others, a moral obligation to speak out against the ongoing slaughter of human beings.

I should add, that I am aware what I'm saying was not true in all cases. There were many, but never enough, who did speak out, such a Martin Luther King, in his brilliant speech against the war in April of 1968. My need, which was to articulate through music and lyrics, my own growing dissatisfaction with the world around me, was met with animosity and skepticism by many, and down right hatred by some.

The more I worked at capturing, through art, what I believed to be the truth, the further I was pushed to the side of the "money for music" business. A lot of music business people said, "Yeah, the guy's real talented, but why doesn't he write something commercial?"

This infuriated me, because I had written many things that were commercial and they'd complained about them too. I decided that if they were going to keep me out I might as well write the kind of songs I wanted to. I knew by then that I was far more serious about what I did than they ever figured out. I'd already had my shot at bubble gum music and wasn't planning to go back to it again.

Sometime after I'd recorded "Holy Holy Holy," and had a tape copy in my hands, I ventured up to San Francisco to see a friend of mine, Greg Thomas. Greg introduced me to the band Blue Cheer. I told them about the tape of Holy Holy Holy and they all thought it sounded pretty interesting.

One of the guys in the band said he knew the girl who was a DJ on the first underground FM rock station on the west coast. He said she was on that afternoon, and we ought to go to the station and see if she'd play the tape on the air. We all decided it was a good idea and piled into the car and headed for the station.

The lady DJ was on the air when we arrived but she invited us in anyway, feeling loved by all the attention she was getting from Blue Cheer. It seems this particular lady was known to like downers so we asked her if she wanted a couple? She, without hesitation, said, "Yes!" I pulled a couple of 3 grain Tuenals out of my pocket and handed them to her. She promptly swallowed both of them.

We all broke up laughing and said, "Damn girl, you really do like those things." While we joked around for twenty or thirty minutes it became apparent that the DJ lady was getting pretty loaded and beginning to slur her words. It was at that point we brought up the tape. Without batting an eyelash, or knowing full well what was on the tape, she asked, " Do you have it with you? Give to me, I'll put it on."

I handed her the tape and watched as she threaded it through the machine and picked up her mic, hitting the cut-in switch. Now you have to remember that this was a live broadcast. "Hello all you.." She broke in, "I have some special guests in the studio with me today."

She went on saying, "I'm here with some of the guys from Blue Cheer, Greg Thomas of Mint Tattoo, and Bobby Jameson, who's visiting us from L.A.. I'm gonna to play a brand new song of Bobby's for the first time anywhere." She clicked on the tape and let it rip. I stood back listening to the song play, when about half way through it the telephone switchboard lit up like a christmas tree and all hell broke loose.

The tape was quickly yanked off the air and the lady DJ handed it back to me saying, "You guys better get out a here because the station owner is on his way and we got big trouble." I apologized to her as we left saying, "I hope you don't get in any trouble or fired." She said, "Don't worry about it. It was worth it. Trippy song Bobby."

We thanked her for playing the tape and exited through the door and down the stairs to the street below. We didn't know whether we should feel guilty, happy, or impressed that the song had caused such a reaction. Someone said as we got in the car, "Yeah, and they didn't even hear the whole thing!"